SANTA ROSA --

Copperfield’s Books welcomes award-winning professor and author Carla Kaplan to Montgomery Village in celebration of her perceptive biography - Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford.

She will be joined in conversation by Iris Jamahl Dunkle, award-winning local biographer, essayist, and poet.

Join us for a reading and warm discussion followed by an audience Q&A and book signing. 

This is a free event, registration recommended.

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE BIOGRAPHY AWARD AND THE PEN/JACQUELINE BOGARD WELD AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR'S CHOICE · A TOWN & COUNTRY "BEST BOOK" · A BLOOMBERG “BEST” BOOK

Troublemaker tells the wild and unlikely story of Jessica Mitford, fifth of the six famous Mitford Girls, a British aristocrat-turned-American Communist, famous for exposés like The American Way of Death; this biography brings her astonishing self-transformation to life with a riveting, often hilarious account of trading wealth and status for a life of radical activism.


Who could predict that a British aristocrat would so energize American antifascist and civil rights struggles that Time magazine would crown her “Queen of the Muckrakers”? Jessica Mitford, always known as Decca, was brought up by an eccentric English family to marry well and reproduce her wealth and privilege, not to advocate for the rights of others. Her beautiful sisters have been subjects of books and movies dedicated to their naughty, glamorous lives. Decca ran away to America to forge a rebel’s life. As this richly researched book details, Decca broke the Mitford mold. Instead of settling for life as a professional Beauty, she fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War, became an American Communist and pioneered witty, hugely popular journalism, including her 1963 blockbuster The American Way of Death.

Decca dedicated her life to social justice and proved herself an immensely effective ally, but she also injected laughter into all her political work, annoying some activists with her relentless antics but encouraging many others to find joy in the struggle. From famed baby doctor Benjamin Spock to best friend Maya Angelou, her anti-authoritarian irreverence had a profound impact on American culture. Mining extensive, untapped sources, and with nearly fifty new interviews, Kaplan’s passionate biography beautifully illuminates how Decca’s hard-won and self-taught social empathy offers a powerful example of female freedom, the dramatic, novelistic story of an extraordinary woman of her time who is remarkably relevant and resonant today.

Author: Carla Kaplan is an award-winning Professor and writer who holds the Stanton W. and Elisabeth K. Davis Distinguished Professorship in American Literature at Northeastern University. She has published seven previous books, including Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters and Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, both New York Times Notable Books. A recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities “Public Scholar” fellowships, Kaplan has also been a fellow in residence at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, is a fellow of the Society of American Historians, chairs the editorial board of the journal Signs, and serves on the board of Biographers International. Her 8th book, a biography of the British-aristocrat-turned-American-Communist-and-muckraker Jessica Mitford, Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford, was published on November 25, 2025, by Harper and December 4 by Hurst (UK) and has been excerpted in Town & Country and The Telegraph and widely reviewed (including in Kirkus (starred), The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Spectator, the Financial Times, and elsewhere. Described as “an absolutely delicious biography of the best Mitford sister” by The Boston Globe (one of the Globe’s “75 Best Books” of the year), as a “gripping new biography … which places Mitford’s achievements within the context of America’s roiling political climate in the mid-20th century” by the Los Angeles Times, and as a “resolutely modern new biography that refuses to reduce this most beautifully messy and complicated of Mitfords to bonmots,” (New York Times, “Critic’s Choice”), Troublemaker appears on numerous “best books” lists and has recently been longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award in Biography.

Iris Jamahl Dunkle is a poet, biographer, and scholar whose work challenges the male-centric narratives of the American West’s recorded history and amplifies the often-overlooked voices of women. Her new book, Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb, is a USA Today bestseller, receiving national acclaim for its poignant exploration of Babb’s life and her fraught relationship with the literary history of the Dust Bowl. PBS producer Ken Burns describes the biography as “heartbreaking and heroic,” bestselling author Kristin Hannah calls it “long overdue,” and U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass lauds Dunkle as a “brilliant and vivid storyteller.” The book has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Millions, The Los Angeles Times, Alta, and many more. An excerpt describing how “Steinbeck mined her research for The Grapes of Wrath. Then her own Dust Bowl novel was squashed” appeared in Salon and sparked dialogue about Babb’s unacknowledged contributions to literary history.

Dunkle earned her MFA in poetry from New York University and her PhD in American Literature from Case Western Reserve University. She is also the author of the biography, Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer and four collections of poetry, including West : Fire : Archive, published by The Center for Literary Publishing. Dunkle curates Finding Lost Voices, a weekly blog dedicated to resurrecting the voices of women who have been marginalized or forgotten. She has garnered recognition through awards and fellowships from esteemed institutions such as Biographers International, Millay Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her writing has appeared in publications including The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, Lit Hub, Orion, Electric Lit, Liber, Pleiades, Tin House, Calyx, Fence, The Los Angeles Review, and Split Rock Review.